Noises Off (Play) Plot & Characters | StageAgent Overview Synopsis Michael Frayn's Noises Off takes a fond look at the follies of theatre folk, whose susceptibility to out-of-control egos, memory loss, and passionate affairs turn every performance into a high-risk adventure. This play-within-a-play captures a touring theatre troupe’s production of Nothing On in three stages: dress rehearsal, the opening performance, and a performance towards the end of a debilitating run. Frayne gives us a window into the inner workings of theatre behind the scenes, progressing from flubbed lines and missed cues in the dress rehearsal to mounting friction between cast members in the final performance. Brimming with slapstick comedy, Noises Off is a delightful backstage farce, complete with slamming doors, falling trousers, and -- of course -- flying sardines! Characters Theatre Review: ‘Noises Off’ at Silhouette Stages | Maryland Theatre Guide Theatre Review: ‘Noises Off’ at Silhouette Stages Posted By: Lynne Menefee on: March 11, 2016 Print Email The cast of ‘Noises Off’ at Silhouette Stages. Photo by Bruce F. Press Photography.

The Silhouette Stages is community theater at its best, illustrated by its current production of the 1982 farce, Noises Off, written by Michael Frayn and directed by Conni Ross. This award-winning and Tony-nominated play is one of the most technically difficult and physically challenging for any company – and one of the funniest. The show is currently making a successful revival at New York’s Roundabout Theatre but this local cast and crew could stand toe-to-toe with any professional production of this play. This play-within-a-play has its own program in the back of the actual program for the fictional production called Nothing On, with Monty Pythonesque biographies of the “actors” and fake, comical ads. Anyone who has ever performed in theater – in school, community theater, or professionally – will understand all the behind the scenes antics and drama of putting on a play. Noises Off is in three acts but each is listed as same Act One of the other play, though in different locations on the tour.

The Silhouette Stages is community theater at its best, illustrated by its current production of the 1982 farce, Noises Off… Noises Off begins as small theater company is going through the final dress rehearsal before their opening. They are launching a national tour around the lesser-known towns of England. This is clearly not a top-notch theater company and the script is mediocre. Director Lloyd Dallas (Gary Reichard) is sitting in the theater making sarcastic comments from the seats and is often forced to come to the stage as the cast stumbles through its lines and stage direction. Dotty Otley (Mirbeth Vogel) is a playing Mrs. Clackett, a maid who seems to have difficulty with a plate of sardines, which becomes a comic focal point in the show as well as the many doors in a complex, two-level set with a staircase. It doesn’t matter what the play is about for they never get past Act One. Advertisement The very nervous and exhausted company and stage manager, Tim Allgood (Adam Abruzzo), is on call in case Seldon Mowbray (Don Patterson) – the cheerful company drunk who plays a burglar – doesn’t show, or shows up less than sober.

Poppy (Parker Bailey Stevens, sporting a spot on Irish accent) is the assistant stage manager who seems to have gotten her job thanks to her father – the chairman of the theater company’s sponsor. She is also in love with the director who is cheating on her with the clueless, self-absorbed Brooke Ashton as Vicki (Allie Dreskin). Brooke spends most of the production in her underthings and preening herself when not performing. In the fictional play, Brooke is coupled with Gary/Roger Tramplemain (Ryan Reichard) who has brought her to the house for an afternoon tryst. When the owners, Philip and Flavia Brent, sneak home from their self-imposed tax exile in Spain, the comedy of errors as is Nothing On are layered on to the missed cues and technical mishaps of the actors. Julie Press as Belinda/ Flavia and Jeff Dunne as Frederick/Philip are delightful as the couple but it is Dunne who is so masterful at physical comedy as the clumsy but sweet actor prone to nosebleeds. It is during a nearly disastrous matinee when the audience witnesses the production from backstage.

More of the company’s personal relationships are revealed – the jealousies and misunderstandings as some of the actors go after each other while simultaneously putting on a show. Kudos go to the cast for their exhausting juggling act as director Ross choreographs a masterful ballet of fast-paced, slapstick action that continues in the final act when it all completely and hilariously comes apart. The set is an architectural marvel with two levels, seven doors, a curtained exit to an attic and a window also used for access. High praise goes to the set designer Alex Porter and his crew. The massive set must be rotated twice during the show and it is a herculean task. The cast also deserves praise for mastering British accents, sometimes two different dialects, as the actors and then as their characters. If you love theater and are looking for any evening of laugh-out loud fun, Noises Off at Silhouette Stages is a best bet – and don’t forget the sardines! Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.

Noises Off runs through March 20, 2016 at Silhouette Stages, Slayton House Theatre in Wilde Lake Village Center, 10400 Cross Fox Lane, in Columbia, MD. For tickets, call the box office at 410-637-5289, or purchase online. Theater Review: Noises Off!, UVM Department of Theatre | Theater | Seven Days | Vermont's Independent Voice Vermont's Independent Voice click to enlarge Cast of Noises Off Michael Frayn's 1982 Noises Off is a three-layer confection of a comedy that looks at the stage itself from three perspectives. The cream filling of Act 2 was perhaps the tastiest in the University of Vermont Department of Theatre production, but every morsel was a treat. The audience settled in to find a well-appointed living room set, with a staircase to a gallery along the second floor. The presence of eight doors and a picture window was a telltale sign: A surplus of entrances can only mean farce, because those doors were meant to be slammed. The lights then came up on what was certainly a farce, and one of stupendous vapidity.

The play-within-a-play is called Nothing On, but before the trysts and room mix-ups can get started, an actor breaks character and checks with the director on when, exactly, she should take the plate of sardines offstage. We're watching a tech rehearsal, not a performance. And these actors, all of them struggling to keep their hand props straight, let alone their lines, aren't remotely ready for opening night in 24 hours. Frayn constructed a farce of a farce and, in doing so, produced an homage to the form. It's also a tribute to the sometimes-pitiable actors who nightly overemote on stages from Britain's regional theaters to our own semipro and community playhouses. The piece is a scrapbook of bad acting, but the portraits are affectionately drawn. Headlining in the fictional cast is Dotty Ottley (Elizabeth Callahan), a former TV star who's in over her head when it comes to remembering whether it's sardines or a newspaper she's to pick up. The earnest Frederick Fellowes (Ellis Burgin) is an actor constantly apologizing for blowing his lines and in need of some kind of motivation for his simplest moves.

The director (Jeff Renaud) attempts to oblige, but he's pretty well given up on whipping this crew into the crack team needed to pull off a farce. The cast includes an ingénue (Sarah Kolozsvary) whose theatrical training consists of wearing sexy undergarments while striking affected poses, and a would-be Shakespearean actor (Christian DeKett) who can't stay sober long enough to make his entrances on cue. The doltish young leading man (Peter Hiebert) is so inarticulate, he's probably incapable of understanding his character's lines. One indefatigable actress (Ceara Ledwith) has been onstage since she was 4 and now serves as the company gossip. To these worthies, Frayn adds a nervous stage manager (Luke Lakea) and a high-strung, heartbroken assistant stage manager (Kaitie Bessette). These hapless fictional actors are prone to waddling with their trousers at their ankles or crawling like commandos to try unobtrusively to replace a lost prop. The gags are broad comedy, but Frayn has constructed true characters.

Buffoons they may be, but they sweetly embody the foibles to which actors are prey. The result is laugh-out-loud funny. Thursday's audience offered up guffaws, not chuckles. Hitting such peaks takes a combination of the script's wild humor, the performers' infectious zeal, the production's impressive set and director Sarah Carleton's tight choreography. After the first act's hilariously botched technical rehearsal, the set is spun around, and we watch from a fully realized backstage. The company is a month into its tour, pausing only briefly from preoccupations with personal jealousies to keep the wheezing farce going onstage. A month and a half later, the third act has us watching a thoroughly bedraggled performance at the end of the tour — this time from the audience's point of view. A bunch of third-rate actors desperately trying to cover various stage catastrophes is the essence of truly great farce. It's Frayn's master class. In UVM's production, Carleton had the performers carry the bad acting a little further than necessary to make the point. The wooden performances in the rehearsal were intentionally deadly, giving us a bit too much of the bad-play experience.

And with acoustics that weren't good enough to let us hear what was spoken upstage and a pace that was uniformly breakneck, the first act was funny, but not transcendently so. The UVM performance took off in Act 2. The intrigues of backstage romances and rivalries had reached a boiling point, and now the cast was playing the richer characters of troubled actors instead of the flat roles in a horrendous sex farce. Act 2 is almost all physical comedy and pantomime, and Carleton marshaled her troops with precision. The actors carried off hilarious stunts and worked together with the panache of a circus act. Defining the maxim that the show must go on, the actors had to interrupt their squabbles to make their entrances, in the nick of time. The set was magnificent. Jeff Modereger made use of the Royall Tyler Theatre's height and gave the house solidity with a carpeted staircase, rich wallpaper and wainscoting. The doors deserved their own curtain call. The lighting by John B. Forbes had the bright intensity that comedy requires, the better to show off garish 1970s costumes designed by Martin Thaler.

The men had collars that just wouldn't quit, and Thaler didn't spare the polyesters and paisleys for the women. The student cast was energetic and maintained Carleton's exhilarating pace. In Thursday's performance, the performers pushed hard, as if still dazzled by pulling off this elaborate entertainment. All that was missing was carving out that brief, weightless moment before a gag explodes, the little grace note that comes from rock-solid confidence. But this cast delivered a rollicking rendition of a very funny play. Frayn has built a kaleidoscope to aim outward, inward and sideways on the subject of theater itself. There's no funnier behind-the-scenes peek at the joys and mishaps of hamming it up. Noises Off, by Michael Frayn, directed by Sarah Carleton, produced by the University of Vermont Department of Theatre. Closed February 28. Royall Tyler Theatre, UVM, Burlington.

The original print version of this article was headlined "Double Play" Related Locations Discount Tickets for Broadway, Off-Broadway and off-Off Broadway Shows | Theatre Development Fund – TDF "I went to my first clown show when I was two weeks old." How Lorenzo Pisoni crafts farce's pratfalls --- There's been an abundance of elegance on Broadway recently—think of the exquisite ballets of An American in Paris and the regal bearing of both Anna and the King—but the Roundabout's revival of Michael Frayn's 1982 backstage farce Noises Off brings something entirely different to the table: drunken, pants-falling-down, gut-splitting, door-slamming pratfalls. We're talking beloved actors (the cast includes Andrea Martin, Campbell Scott, Megan Hilty, and Tracee Chimo) rolling around on stage in compromising positions, crashing through scenery, and tossing sardines and axes with Stooge-like precision. Behind the inspired lunacy is a handsome and talented actor who doesn't even appear on stage in this production.

Lorenzo Pisoni, whose résumé includes Broadway credits and Shakespeare in the Park, is listed as the show's "Comic Stunt Coordinator." Though Pisoni claims he doesn't even know what the title means, it means this: When you're howling with laughter at an over-the-top pratfall, you have him to thank. So how does one go from speaking the words of the Bard to choreographing a backward, pants-less tumble down the stairs? It helps if you grew up in the circus. "I was raised on physical comedy," explains Pisoni, whose dad Larry Pisoni founded the influential Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco with legendary clown Bill Irwin during the 1970s. "I went to my first clown show when I was two weeks old, and the first movie I ever saw was Buster Keaton's Seven Chances. I love this kind of comedy." As soon as he could walk, Pisoni joined his older sister Gypsy as part of the show, first performing with the Pickles at the ripe old age of two.

However, after 20 years of juggling, flipping, and wearing an ape suit, Pisoni decided to retire from the circus and head east to conquer the New York stage. "I denied my circus past," he says. "But I did things that were very physical along the way, like Equus." (He played the horse Nugget in the 2008 revival starring Daniel Radcliffe.) It was an offhand conversation with fellow actor David Furr during their 2013 run in Manhattan Theater Club's The Explorer's Club that brought Pisoni to the attention of Noises Off director Jeremy Herrin, who was taking about as far a turn as possible from last's year's stately historical epic Wolf Hall. "David told me he would be playing Garry, [a lovelorn leading man who can't quite finish a thought when he's speaking], and I said, just as a friend, 'If you need help falling down the stairs, I'd be glad to help,'" recalls Pisoni. Word got back to Herrin, who brought in Pisoni and his bag of circus tricks to work with the entire cast on their falls, flops, and other gravitational challenges.

The cast of "Noises Off" In a production in which scenes from the same fake play (the hilariously terrible Nothing On) are repeated three times from three different viewpoints, each time with the cast getting angrier, drunker, and more confused, each bit of business has to be choreographed with absolute precision. One false move, and the whole thing can fall apart. But for Pisoni, the primary concern was making sure the cast of nine, who he says were game for anything, no matter how embarrassing and crazy, remained in one piece through eight shows a week. "Jeremy wanted nothing less than total destruction for some of the stunts, so there were some bruises during rehearsals and some icing down after," Pisoni says. "But we're very clear that safety comes first. I kept telling the cast, 'We can't choreograph anything for Tuesday night; we have to choreograph it for Sunday matinee." Though his contribution to Noises Off came about as almost a lark, fate might have played just a teensy part. After all, Furr wasn't his only Explorer's Club cast-mate with a connection to the farce: Carson Elrod appeared in the 2002 Broadway revival.

In addition, Pisoni's sister (and fellow child performer) Gypsy Snider created the circus elements for Diane Paulus's recent revival of Pippin—starring none other than Noises Off's Andrea Martin on a trapeze. But one final link truly makes this convergence of talent and text seem set in the stars: "There was a production of Noises Off in the early '80s at the Marin Theatre Company, and my father designed the stair fall," Pisoni says. And who did the circus legend use as his guinea pig to test out the stunt? His young son, Lorenzo. --- Marisa Cohen is a freelance writer in New York who can be heard singing show tunes with her two daughters at all hours of the day. Photos by Joan Marcus. Top photo: The cast of Noises Off. Noises Off Tickets Noises Off Tickets Noises Off Tickets In 1982, Michael Frayn wrote ‘Noises Off’, a comedy play that went on to become one of the most popular productions of all time. To this day the show holds a special place in the hearts of avid theater fans, who consider it to be one of the most hilarious stories ever written.

It follows the story of the cast and crew of a play, within a play, that don’t get along all that well, but have come together in order to put on a great show. However with each passing day the situations keeps on getting worse till it all comes to a head on the last day of the production. If you want to watch this play as well, all you need are Noises Off tickets and you can watch it live.

View Noises Off Tickets Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/08 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Sat Apr 08 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/09 02:00 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Sun Apr 09 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/13 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Thu Apr 13 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/14 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Fri Apr 14 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/15 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Sat Apr 15 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/20 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Thu Apr 20 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/21 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Fri Apr 21 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic

 Theatre tickets for 04/22 07:30 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Sat Apr 22 2017 Noises Off, Spokane Civic Theatre tickets for 04/23 02:00 PM Spokane Civic Theatre Sun Apr 23 2017 View Tickets The world of theater has been very lucky to have some of the greatest stories in history created for the stage.

Some of the best actors have also made their mark in theater. That made it the most popular tool for entertainment in the world, before the development of mass media stunted its growth. This however did not take away the allure the stage still holds, as well as the quality that it attracts. To this day some of the best people in the movie and television business make their start in theater, or join a production in order to improve themselves. Up go the Curtains Keeping up with the tradition of bringing classic stories to the stage, theater once again presents a revival of the popular eighties play, titled ‘Noises Off.’ Following the story of a dysfunctional group of people involved in the production of a play, it focuses on the ‘behind the scenes’ life of a theater company, as well as the numerous feuds, friendships and problems that arise between them. Considered one of the funniest theater productions in history, you should definitely try and catch a show yourself. Just book your Noises Off tickets and enjoy the experience, live. Noises Off was written by Michael Frayn in 1982. Frayn was a talented man and had, at different times been a reporter, columnist, novelist, playwright and even a screenwriter.

He wrote several plays, articles, novels and screenplays, along with a series of translations. He took his start as a columnist and was famous for writing comedic or satirical pieces that added to his reputation as a writer. He then moved on to writing fiction, something he thrived at, while at the same time working on his plays. To date, his various contributions have helped him win several awards including the St. Louis Literary Award, Golden PEN Award for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature, a Tony Award, six London Evening Standard Awards and many more. The Lights Beam Down The idea for Noises Off came to Frayn when he was writing a play called ‘The Two of Us’ in 1970. He realized that even though it was supposed to be a comedy, and was even quite well received by the audience, he himself found the goings on behind the curtain a lot more entertaining. He realized then that he had to share some of his experiences with the general public and as a result Noises Off was born.

The play follows the story of the production of a ‘play within a play’, titled “Nothing On.” The cast and the crew each have their own specific stories going on, as each character tries to put aside their differences in order to put on a great show. The story is divided into three major acts. The first portrays the dress rehearsal stage, a time when some relationships are being developed while others are deteriorating. The second act is of the matinee performance, which goes off without too much trouble on stage, but behind it is another story entirely. The third act shows the night of the last performance, when everything finally comes to a head. Time for the Bow Noises Off has been regarded by many theater buffs to be one of the most hilarious Broadway productions of all time. This has helped it win several awards, including the London Evening Standard Award for the Best Comedy as well as the Laurence Olivier Award for the Best Comedy. Now it is being brought back to the big stage, with a star studded line up and a whole new take on this classic tale. If you want to be part of this amazing experience as well, then you can.

Just book your Noises Off tickets and enjoy the show, live as it comes back to life at a theater near you. Advanced Search WWE Tickets Testimonials I was really running out of options with where to take my girlfriend on our first anniversary when I found out that you guys still had tickets for the Elton John show, even when the venue showed they were sold out! I would just like to thank you guys for being there and making this a really special day for us both! Nelson Davies (Tampa - Florida) I don't usually write these for websites but your service has made me want to really commend what a great job you people are doing. Thanks to Josh, I found tickets for exactly where I wanted to sit and he even chucked in a nice discount for me! Three cheers guys! Jennifer Andrews (New York City - NY) I would just like to drop in a word to appreciate the friendly and polite customer service I have received from your representatives. They made it really easy for me to find the right tickets and even suggested where I should sit and what time I should get to the venue! Keep up the good work!

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Andrew Waterman THEATER - Farce Within Farce - Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off' - NYTimes.com THEATER; Farce Within Farce: Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off' By ALVIN KLEIN Published: June 27, 1993 "NOISES OFF" is about a provincial English repertory company touring in a thoroughly tacky sex comedy called "Nothing On." Much acknowledged and justly so, the farce within a farce is the flip side of Michael Frayn, an amazingly protean playwright ("The Benefactors," a drama about social reform, was a 1985 hit on Broadway), novelist ("Now You Know," a portentous comedy about bureaucracies was published this year), adapter (of French and Russian authors, mostly Chekhov) and journalist. For all Mr. Frayn's braininess and versatility, it is this 1982 theater piece, recently mauled in a movie version, for which he remains best known.

What "Noises Off" says about a dying-out genre is relevant to the dire state of summer stock and what it shows of actors and a director gone haywire makes a final statement, preposterous and inarguable, about the theater at its craziest. Is "Noises Off" not an apt choice for the opening show of the Westport Country Playhouse's 63d season? The production itself, directed by David Saint, is to travel to two other summer theaters for three weeks total after the local run ends on Saturday. Of course, it is and it isn't apt, for the time needed to get right all that goes wrong with Mr. Frayn's hapless troupe is beyond the reasonable time given a summer company. It is impossible not to recall the remark made by the play's original director, Michael Blakemore, after he beheld Mr. Frayn's stage directions for the first time. "It made me want to go lie down at once," Mr. Blakemore said. With six doors that slam and one that just swings, the first act is a dress rehearsal that correctly foreshadows disaster, with six hours left before the next night's opening.

"I don't know why the author came into this industry in the first place," the director, played by John Rensenhouse, wonders. The second act presents a chaotic backstage view of the first act, a month into the tour. "This play is beyond the help of a director," says the director who is dropping in for a liaison with the ingenue. The cast -- a crazed mess of bruised egos, petty animosities, romantic squabbles and fallen trousers -- is also beyond help. By the third act, a recapitulation of the first, everything is off with "Nothing On." Three months after the dress rehearsal, cues are bungled, props misplaced, actors bandaged and bloody, lines skewered (there's one about a hot water box and a first aid bottle). "It's like a battlefield out there," sputters the leading lady, Dotty Otley, who plays the housekeeper, Mrs. Clackett. Lucky that the Westport cast has Millicent Martin, in indigenous English style, holding forth as Dotty Otley and Mr. Rensenhouse as the stressed-out lascivious director.

James Carruthers is very dear as Selsdon, a senile, hard-of-hearing ham who is better at finding the hidden liquor bottles than his entrances and exits. And Brooks Ashmanskas is a young actor of promise as a fatigued stage manager, a frantic gofer and a captive fill-in for Selsdon. In various stages of decomposure, Deirdre Lovejoy (the flakey ingenue), Richard Bekins (a jealous leading man), Keith Curran (a jealous supporting actor), Anne Swift (an ax-wielding supporting actress) and Laura Hughes (a frazzled production assistant) suffer wear and tear gladly. "Noises Off" at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court. 227-4177. Performances continue through Saturday. Photo: Millicent Martin in "Noises Off," playing in Westport.

(Jayson Byrd) Auburn Community Theater stages farce-within-a-farce Auburn Community Theater stages farce-within-a-farce Five-show run of Michael Frayn's comedy 'Noises Off' opens Friday Belinda Blair (Lisa Bisel), left, tries to convince Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett) the play he is directing is falling apart in "Noises Off," a farce by Michael Frayn, which Auburn Community Theater opens Friday and runs through July 27 at the Auburn Community Center. In Auburn Community Theater's production of the farce "Noises Off," actress Dottie Otley (Erin McGinnis), left, tries to disarm actor Garry Lejeune (Justin Kochan) before he takes an ax to another cast member. Frederick "Freddy" Fellowes (Shawn Nyberg), left, an actor in "Nothing On," the play-within-a-play in Auburn Community Theater's production of "Noises Off," pleads with director Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett) to explain his motivation.

Veteran actor and heavy drinker Selsdon Mowbray (Duane McGuire) delivers the closing line of Act I as the burglar in "Nothing On, " the play-within-the-play in Auburn Community Theater's production of the farce "Noises Off," which opens Friday at the Auburn Community Center. In Auburn Community Theater's production of the Michael Frayn farce "Noises Off," director Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett), left, reacts to some shocking news delivered by Poppy Norton-Taylor (Jeni Thomas), his assistant stage manager and one of his mistresses. Director Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett), center, pleads with neophyte actress Brooke Ashton (Tiffiny Brown), left, to stick to the scrip, which assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Jeni Thomas) holds in "Noises Off," a farce Auburn Community Theater is staging weekends through July 27.

In Auburn Community Theater's production of "Noises Off," a farce, director Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett), right, tells stage manager Timothy Allgood (Andrew Enstminger) he needs to give a bottle of whiskey and buy some flowers for an actress with whom he is having affair without the assistant stage manager with whom he also is having a tryst finding out. AUBURN — “Noises Off,” the comedy the Auburn Community Theater opens Friday, is a three-act farce, but each act is the first act of the same play-within-a-play. English playwright Michael Frayn said he got the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of a farce he had written for Lynn Redgrave. “It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought one day I must write a farce from behind,” he recalled. The result is “Noises Off,” a British theatrical term for “sound heard in the wings,” which since its opening in 1982 has been dubbed by many critic and audience member as the funniest comedy and earned Tony Award nominations for its original run and a revival.

The Auburn Community Theater production, directed by Bert Miller, opens its five-show run Friday on a massive, two-story set with stairs, eight doors and a window, on which a third-rate, touring theatrical company is struggling to get through its final dress rehearsal of a sex farce titled “Nothing On.” Only hours before opening night, director Lloyd Dallas (Allan Hazlett) is faced with a variety of problems. Dotty Otley (Erin McGinnis), who plays a housekeeper at a British estate, just can’t remember what to do with the props in the play, especially several plates of sardines. Frederick “Freddy” Fellowes (Shawn Nyberg) constantly asks for his motivation in doing the slightest of actions and when threatened with violence tends to get nosebleeds. Dotty flirts off stage with Freddy in order to provoke jealousy in fellow cast member Garry Lejeune (Justin Kochan) who is easily fired up. Brooke Ashton (Tiffiny Brown), the cast’s ingenue, has a tendency to mentally check out on stage and create chaos when she loses one of her contact lenses.

Not only that, but Brooke is having an affair with Dallas, who also is fooling around with the emotional and over-sensitive assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Jeni Thomas). Lisa Bisel plays the cheerful, sensible and reliable actress Belinda Blair, who along with the over-worked stage manager Timothy Allgood (Andrew Enstminger), often must be the watchdog of the play’s senior cast member, Selsdon Mowbray (Duane McGuire), who has a tendency to wander off to drink whiskey. The cast of “Nothing On” struggles through Act I during “Noises Off’s” first act, and during the first intermission, the audience will see the show’s technical crew dismantle the three pieces of the set to turn them around so Act II opens behind the scenery. It’s a month later and the relationships and jealousies among the cast lead to backstage battles, including the brandishing of an ax. Before the curtain falls, half the cast is drunk, in tears or wounded. A second intermission follows, during which the set is again turned around to face the footlights when Act III of “Noises Off” again presents Act I of “Nothing On” near the end of its 10-week tour.

The personal friction among the cast has reached the flash point, and the play turns into a spectacular and hilarious disaster. Brenda Sidebottom and Debbie Bramlage stage-manage “Noises Off,” which will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Thursday and July 26-27 in the gymnatorium of the Auburn Community Center, 121 W. 11th. Tickets are $10. An optional dinner is served from 6 to 7 p.m. at the two Saturday shows for an additional $10 with 48-hour reservations. Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling (785) 256-2848 or online through a link at the theater’s website at . When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Thursday and July 26-27 Where: Auburn Community Center, 121 W. 11th Tickets: $10 for the show plus $10 for optional dinner at 6 p.m.

at the Saturday shows on sale at (785) 256-2848 or Advertisement The Oxonian Review » Noises From The Void Noises From The Void … … Noises Off is, according to the New York Post, the “funniest farce ever written.” While this sounds like a compliment, indeed a glowing compliment, it also indicates the reputation which has held the play in a stranglehold since its formidable premiere in 1982. It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that farce is all very well for a fun night out at the theatre, but it is—isn’t it?—forgettable, trivial, insignificant. Noises Off has enjoyed plaudits and ovations for its uniquely impressive laugh quota, but has rarely been taken seriously. This, no doubt well-meaning, praise has marked a sustained underestimation of Michael Frayn’s hilarious account of the antics of a group of hapless thespians as they stage a farce called Nothing On. Even as these six characters in search of direction stagger through their half-remembered lines and mechanically-performed gestures, in the seeming chaos that surrounds them emerges an experimental piece of theatre with weighty existential concerns.

This view is one which may not only raise sceptical eyebrows, but also prompt the outraged cry that so often attends attempts to draw out the more thoughtful achievements of comedy: “must we conspire to make everything serious?” But there is no conspiracy here, no violent imposition on a funny script. The frivolity which jigs merrily at the heart of the play—the pratfalls, the dropped trousers, the groping for another lost contact lens—is not only the trigger for belly-laughs. It is also, undoubtedly, a playful swipe at the rather too earnest conventions of much theatre. Any attempt at psychologically rich characterisation is abandoned in favour of the ridiculous spectacle of two-dimensional figures ineptly discussing motivation as they try to portray resolutely one-dimensional stereotypes; a narrative arc built on conflict and development is sacrificed for a repetitive structure in which nothing much happens; and any kind of political message disappears in a cascade of showering sardines and collapsing curtains. Ultimately, the play’s triumph is precisely not to recognise the stark and unhelpful dichotomy of trivial-serious.

Indeed, it is precisely through its understanding of just how forgettable, insignificant, and trivial farce is—and its remarkable play with those very qualities—that Noises Off offers one of the most daring critiques of theatrical meaning. It is one of the play’s delicious conceits that even the characters—whose careers and life-savings are invested in Nothing On—consider it so trivial and insignificant that they can’t quite remember it. The metatheatrical mechanisms of Noises Off orbit this stark fact: this is a farce which seems to have no time for farce. And the humour arises from the spectacle of the self-forgetting farce forgetting itself in ever-more delirious cycles of forgetfulness. At the heart of this forgetfulness is a kind of diseased repetition. The first act of Nothing On—in various but equal states of disarray—is performed three times: in rehearsal in Weston-super-Mare, in a matinee performance in Ashton-under-Lyne, and in an evening performance in Stockton-on-Tees. Each reiterated line, delivered in the spasm of the panicked confusion of a misdelivery, bears the marks of decay and disorder.

No utterance is purely itself; every utterance is a recycling, a fumbled re-use of borrowed words, sounds, meanings, so nearly (though never quite) what the audience has heard a short while before. In this frenetically repetitive play lurks a more serious mechanism, which Poststructuralists call iterability. As Christopher Norris describes it, paraphrasing Derrida: This ‘iterability’, or power of being transferred from one specific context to another, is evidence that speech-acts cannot be confined to the unique self-present moment of meaning. They partake of the différance or distancing from origin that marks all language in so far as it exceeds and pre-exists the speaker’s intention. This is the confounding of the logic which haunts the exam answers of GCSE students everywhere, that repetition emphasises and consolidates. Or, as Algirdas Greimas phrases it, that repetition can “guarantee the homogeneity of a discourse as utterance.” In defiance of syllabuses everywhere, Noises Off sides decisively with Derrida, throbbing with the anarchic energy of iterability’s play of meaning. Noises Off stages the inherent recursion in plays—and, by extension, any utterance.

Nothing On is not a simple linear structure, but, rather, a composite piece, a mosaic made up of clichés, quotations, and allusions, destined to be said and resaid ad infinitum. What looks like a finite, almost banally straightforward pattern is, in fact, an endless dance of decaying repetitions. Perfect companion piece to Derrida’s theories, Noises Off embodies the idea that: something invisible is missing in this grammar of repetition… Repeated, the same line is no longer exactly the same, the ring no longer has exactly the same center, the origin has played. Frayn, with delicious relish, toys with his audience, tickling them discreetly with these delicately controlled repetitions. Dotty, the eccentric star of Nothing On, likens her grasp of lines to a fruit machine: “I never know if it’s going to come out three oranges or two lemons and a banana.” Freddie, the well-intentioned buffoon who can’t help putting his foot in it, repeatedly enters, determined, despite a concussion, to deliver his crucial line about a tax demand.

Selsdon, a gentleman actor well past his prime, dries repeatedly after the tantalising line, “They all say the same thing, they all say the same thing”; what follows each time is another in a series of variations on a theme, a set of nearly-right lines, in which syntactic rearrangement or homophonic confusion throws meaning into chaos. Beating, pulse-like through the play, runs a tripartite rhythm: the three acts of the play, the performances of Nothing On, the pieces of fruit in Dotty’s arcade game, Freddie’s aborted efforts to talk about his tax demand. And, as Act III ends, in a wondrous coup de thé√¢tre, three almost-but-not-quite-the-same burglars take to the stage, in a crazed hyper-performance of the staple gestures of theatrical farce. Again, this prominence afforded the number three is in perfect synchrony with Derrida’s theories: … everything has begun with repetition. Once the center or the origin have begun by repeating themselves, by redoubling themselves, the double did not only add itself to the simple. It divided it and supplemented it. There was immediately a double origin plus its repetition. Three is the first figure of repetition.

The last, too, for the abyss of representation always remains dominated by its rhythm, infinitely. The apocalyptic imagery here is appropriate for the hysterical (in both senses of the word) atmosphere which characterises the final moments of the play. As the curtain (falling for the third time) collapses around these desperate, repetitive characters, Noises Off hits a note of such frenetic comic pitch that it is almost frightening. Before the audience—at the same moment as they roar with laughter at the spectacle of abject theatrical confusion—a ‘void’ of endless, ternary repetition gapes in front of them, a void in which terms are caught in an infinite cycle of repetition, their unstable meanings in endless play. Fixed sense is exposed as impossible. And yet—the audience does not despair. The post-show foyers of theatres showing Noises Off are alive with laughter. Michael Frayn’s great genius lies in bringing us face to face with that void, and making us laugh at it. For, whatever else it is, Noises Off is a very funny play, a play about play, about the way in which language is caught in a wild, dislocated dance in which meaning is deferred, and giddily open to plural, boundless possibilities.

For what else, the play asks, is theatre, but the comings-on and goings-off of stuttering figures in endless cycles that explode the possibility of any originary, complete meaning? And, for that matter—as Lloyd, director of Nothing On and self-proclaimed God suggests—what else is life? With its extraordinary, funny, stark arbitrariness, Noises Off nods as much to Beckett as to Whitehall Farces: “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” Noises Off, a University of Oxford Student Company: Milk and Two Sugars production, is running at the Oxford Playhouse from Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 February. Benedict Morrison is reading for a DPhil in English at Merton College, Oxford. He is Managing Editor at the Oxonian Review. Be Sociable, Share!

Question: Which 1982 play by Michael Frayn shows three stages in the development of the play 'Nothing On'?
Answer: 'NOISES OFF'